Keep your blood sugar levels controled

In the United States, 5 to 7 per 100 pregnant women have gestational diabetes each year. These women have 89% more chances to birth children who become overweight by the time they reach 5-7 years old; they also have 82% higher chances of seeing their children become obese at that crucial age.

Even mothers whose blood sugar rose higher than normal but not enough to qualify as gestational diabetics also had 22% more chances of raising overweight or obese children. This means that the higher the mother’s blood sugar during pregnancy, the bigger the likelihood that the child would become obese at age 5 to 7.

These were the findings in a large-scale study on 9,439 mother-child pairs, conducted by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Or. None of the women were diabetic before their pregnancies, but during pregnancy their blood sugar levels rose much higher to qualify as gestational diabetics.

Gestational diabetes is a temporary condition for the mother. It happens because there is a higher demand for insulin during pregnancy, and the pancreas of some women cannot produce the extra insulin needed. The condition normalizes after childbirth. But the tendency to obesity will be a permanent condition for the child.

There is some hope, however. The study also found that if gestational diabetes is treated early enough during pregnancy, the risk will go down. In the study, for those women who had the highest blood sugar but were treated for diabetes during pregnancy, their children had the same risks to obesity as other kids. But the mother should get treatment in the early stages of pregnancy. Gestational diabetics are usually advised to adhere to a strict diet and an exercise regimen; if that does not work, the doctor may give insulin.

Maternal diabetes raises the obesity risk for the child because of metabolic imprinting, or pre-programming of their metabolism while in the womb. The high blood sugar of the mother directly results in overfeeding of the fetus, and its developing metabolism becomes attuned to that feeding rate.

Screening for high blood sugar levels (called hyperglycemia) is usually done at 24 to 28 weeks (6 to 7 months) of pregnancy, but this test is not standard to all women. The expectant mother should discuss the risk of diabetes with their doctor and insist on getting screened. If treatment is necessary, the mother should follow the doctor’s advice closely, for the long term good of their child.

The American Diabetes Association, which provided the funds for this study, says that between 1 and 14 percent of pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes, although the average is 5 to 7 percent. This study follows the release of the Trust for America’s Health report on obesity, which highlights the increasing rates of obesity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.